Tag: HABA Games

designed by Michael Kiesling & Wolfgang Kramer, published by HABA Games

Defend the kingdom from the rampaging fog creatures by collecting swords, magical herbs, gold, and bold companions, lots and lots of bold companions! Everyone starts with their 8-10 (depending on the number of players) on the top left corner of the board. Each turn, each player will draw two cards that will direct them to place one of the items (sword, herb, companion, gold, or fog monster) by grid coordinate (A-K, 1-10) on the board. Then players have two moves. They can move one adventurer twice, or two adventurers once. Here’s the catch: players can move their adventurers any distance down or to the right on the board, but they can’t move up or to the left. In other words, everyone heads inevitably to the bottom right of the board. Once an adventurer stops in a space, he will pick up the item in that space: swords and herbs help in combat, gold scores points at the end of the game, and companions will join the player’s meeple, forming a party that moves with that adventurer, making it easier to fight monsters along the way. Or he’ll fight a fog monster! Once the companions and swords run out, the game ends, and scoring begins!

Three different scenarios offer different scoring and different strategies, giving this game lots of different strategies, with the first scenario easy enough for kids, and the last is a clever area control game. Even though the same objects will always appear on the same space, the order that they appear is random from game to game and thus forces interesting strategic decisions, especially since your adventurers can’t go back or up once they pass a space. But invariably, someone just gets a massive army of dudes that end up chilling in the castle at the lower right of the board.

Be the first brave explorer to find the mysterious lost temple in this…wait didn’t I already write this review? Oh, but this is a tile-laying game and there are multiple temples to get to. Race your explorers to their matching temples in this clever little tile-laying game that feels a bit like bingo. One player places her stack of tiles face down, and each turns draws a tile and calls out the number of the tile drawn. The other players find that tile, and everyone places the same tile somewhere, anywhere on their own personal game board. Or, players can discard that tile to move an explorer a number of tile spaces they’ve already played on the board equal to the number of road spaces that lead off the tile. Score points to be the first to lead your explorer to each of the temples, or by picking up diamonds gold nuggets that appear on certain tiles. The person with the most points when the tiles run out wins!

In essence, everyone has the same tile to place and their explorers and temples are start in the same place, but the real strategy shows up when you decide what to do with tile: do you place it down to build your path? Or do you discard it to move? Or do you keep it for the gold, even though it gives you good movement? Simple gameplay and lots of choices makes this a great family game.

One Line Verdict: Yet another trip into a jungle? But a different one with new scenery. Grab your hat and go already!

The evil trolls have stolen the Golden Amulet of the Kingdom of Kaskaria! Race on your cliff jumper and scaled griffin to retrieve this valuable treasure! On their turn, players will either draw a card or play two or more cards of the same color to advance their pieces, collect gold, or to add cards to their hand. The first player to arrive at the nest and recover the amulet ends the game, but gold is earned for being furthest along either the cliff jumper track or the scaled griffin track. Whoever has the most gold from collecting it along the way or placing wins! Did I mention this was a HABA kid’s game? My six year-old won and she liked it!

Enough gameplay options to both challenge the kids AND keep the adults in the game without them having to hold back. But with so many colors, it’s sometimes hard to figure out which colors actually match.